do no harm
do no harm verb: to perform no actions which will be injurious or in any way unfavorable to another person, regardless of whether one does anything of positive benefit for that other person.
Verb
do no harm (third-person singular simple present does no harm, present participle doing no harm, simple past did no harm, past participle done no harm)
- To perform no actions which will be injurious or in any way unfavorable to another person, regardless of whether one does anything of positive benefit for that other person.
- "Oh, make your mind easy! I shall do no harm, if I do no good."1889, Wilkie Collins, chapter 51, in The Legacy of Cain
- [G]et government out of the gambling business. . . . These officials pervert public policy, which should at least do no harm.1999 March 29, William Safire, “Essay”, in New York Times, retrieved 18 Aug 2014
Examples of do no harm in a sentence
- First, consider the moral minimum, do no harm.2005, Patricia Illingworth, Trusting Medicine: The Moral Costs of Managed Care, Routledge, →ISBN, page 100:
- A doctor's principle code is, "First, do no harm."2008 December 20, Judith D. Schwartz, “Making Hospitals Greener — and Patients Healthier”, in Time, retrieved 18 Aug 2014:
Forms of do no harm
| third-person singular present | does no harm |
|---|---|
| present participle | doing no harm |
| past | did no harm |
| past participle | done no harm |
Origin of do no harm
Calque of Latin prīmum nōn nocēre.
Questions about do no harm
- What does do no harm mean?
- Do no harm means to perform no actions which will be injurious or in any way unfavorable to another person, regardless of whether one does anything of positive benefit for that other person.
- How do you use do no harm in a sentence?
- First, consider the moral minimum, do no harm.
- What part of speech is do no harm?
- Do no harm is a verb.
- What is the past tense of do no harm?
- The past tense of do no harm is did no harm.
Words near do no harm in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: do no harm (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “do no harm.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/do_no_harm. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.